Join me as I turn a flea market find into a mid-century marvel

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Creativity

Just like with a real house, decorating the Flip This (Mini) House project never ends. The living room, which I just highlighted earlier today, has gotten a make-under. The bubble chair has been swapped with the Eames lounge chair and ottoman from the house’s upstairs office. The fluffy white rug has been swapped out with a carpet from the house’s storage drawer. Ahhh! That’s better!

Much of the art, furniture, and accessories in the Flip This (Mini) House project are repurposed objects I found for next to nothing at garage sales and thrift stores, or that I created from materials from craft stores and hardware stores.

A closer look at the Flip This (Mini) House living room. To learn how to make a bubble chair, faux modern pendant light, and much more, take a look at old posts.

I got together with my friend Janet a few days ago. You may remember her as the friend who found my original mini house at a flea market, back in the summer of 2014. It was just $35! She and her husband then brought it to me and the blog Flip This (Mini) House was born.

Well… She’s at it again. Here’s her latest find. This one I got for the low price of free. It’s in pretty bad shape, but, like my original project, I see a great deal of potential in it. I’m not really sure that I’m ready for another mini house flipping project just yet, but maybe when the snow begins to fall outside I’ll change my mind.

While I haven’t been obsessive about the scale within my mini house (in part because there are issues within the house itself, with differences in door frames and things like that), this sofa leaned toward being a little too big. However, I thought I’d refinish it with some of my awesome mid century fabric I got at the St. Vinny’s in Canada last month, just to see if I could make it work.

Choosing between these… and I went with…

This one.

Can you guess what these will be?

Almost ready!

Ta-Da!

The end result is quite cute, but especially with the addition of the legs, I feel that it might be a tad too big for my house. We’ll see if it makes the final decorating cut…

To me, it looks like furniture actually looked in the 70’s. There’s none of the teak, Danish modern 1960’s thing going on with it, which is what I’d ideally like for the dining room.

I decided to give it a makeover to see if I could convince myself to love it. After all, I’ve been looking high and low for the “perfect” set for months, and I don’t think I’m going to find it.

Here is some vintage fabric I just picked up at a St. Vinny’s in Canada (My goal: to visit every St. Vinny’s in the world).

Authentic Canadian fabric. Photos by Holly Tierney-Bedord. All rights reserved.

I especially love the bottom pattern. I might have to turn that one into something for my real house.

Here’s the fabric again, beside one of the dining room chairs. I’m determining which pattern works best with the scale. I also set each in the kitchen/dining area to see which colors blended best with the wallpaper and adjacent kitchen tiles.

Choosing fabric for the chair.

The winner is… This one!

What the heck! You mean the original fabric was actually paper???

Before and after.

A whole set of chairs!

And a matching table runner, to top it all off.

Trying it out in my in-progress dining room.

I’ve got to admit… I really like it! The next step is to make a matching cushion for the window seat bench behind it.